For the perfect chèvre chaud, one of these cheeses should be cut into slices about a centimetre thick and melted (though not entirely—the slices should keep their shape) on to toasted bread. Here again, there is a frighteningly large scope for cooking abuse. All too often, the bread will be industrial squares of underbaked white loaf—yes, even in France this exists. It’s called pain de mie and sometimes it doesn’t even have any crusts, so its sogginess beneath a thick slice of chèvre is easy to imagine. Occasionally you will be offered toasted baguette, which is OK when well grilled, but too often undercooked—the sign of a rushed kitchen. Ideally, I find, the cheese should be on a slice of pain au levain—an old-fashioned, dark-floured loaf—or pain Poîlane, a well-known brand of crusty, levain-type bread.
The key thing is that the bread and cheese should be grilled together. Sometimes, a piece of raw cheese may be put on pre-grilled bread and quickly heated—a clumsy clash of textures. Worst of all, a pre-prepared slice of bread and melted cheese will be put in the microwave, so that the whole thing will come out as floppy as—well, we all know what shouldn’t be floppy.
There are various schools of thought on whether to add herbs on top, or honey. Personally, I’m a purist. Forget the kinky stuff, and give it to me naked—let the bread and cheese breathe.
Even once a careful chef has got the ingredients and the cooking right, there’s the quantity to consider. How many slices of goat’s cheese should be on each various-sized piece of bread? And how many pieces of bread will be riding on top of the salad? Anything under three slices of goat’s cheese and you’re being down-chèvred, I feel, unless it’s advertised as tartine de chèvre, which is, in fairness, just a piece of bread and cheese.
Then there is the salad itself to be considered. This doesn’t apply only to chèvre chaud, of course. Has the chef settled for a straightforward heap of lettuce? Or do you get a variety of leaves, and maybe even cherry tomatoes, walnuts, pine nuts, and pieces of fresh apple? It’s a real test of the café’s generosity and imagination.
And finally there’s the dressing. One look at a chef’s salad dressing says volumes about him or her. A few well-defined squirts of sweetish, yellowish liquid means it’s probably out of a bottle. Some chefs do mix their own dressings and put them in a plastic container for ease of use, but nothing looks quite like one of those homogenized, starched, monosodium-glutamated supermarket vinaigrettes, and if you get the slightest whiff of an industrial dressing, it’s probably safest to rip the café out of your guide book (perhaps after checking that there’s nothing useful on the other side of the page).
If, on the other hand, you’re given a homemade dressing, personally I’m happy with anything tangy, especially if I can taste real olive oil. Though I’m not convinced that balsamic goes very well with chèvre chaud. It tends to dominate too much.
All of which is a very detailed, highly personal way of saying that one dish that you enjoy can tell you everything you need to know about the chef and his or her menu. A café that gets your favourite dish right will probably make a good job of everything else, too. So if you have time for trial and error, it’s the most reliable way of picking your regular eating-place while you’re in Paris.
It’s also a good idea to try and take a look at the chef. In many cafés, the kitchen opens out into the bar, so you can watch the cook at work. This can be very revealing. Take a look at the menu written on the blackboard and then compare it to what’s going on in the kitchen. Is the chef cutting up cheese for the quiche au bleu? Slicing potatoes for the gratin dauphinois? In this way, even in a simple-looking corner café, you will often see proof that the food is going to be fresh and cooked by a pro.
In one café where I sometimes arrange morning meetings, the chef is on permanent show, constantly chopping, grating and mixing in his tiny kitchen. And even though this is a modest lunch place for people working in nearby supermarkets and a pensions office, the chef is always dressed in a white jacket and pale-blue checked trousers, and makes almost everything by hand. He is also a highly choosy buyer.
One morning, I was standing at the bar having a coffee when the butcher’s rep came in with the monthly bill. The two men said their bonjours and then embarked on a detailed conversation about meat-carving. The chef was complaining,
‘Le rosbif, le rosbif, why can they never cut it right? Look.’ They went into the kitchen and the chef took a tray of red meat out of one of his fridges and showed it to the rep. They stared and commented, and I overheard the chef ending the conversation with ‘that’s not how my grand-mère used to cut it’. No pre-packed, pre-cooked, reheated food in this place, that’s for sure.
On another day, I watched the same chef grabbing a handful of red jelly from a pot, melting it in a bain marie, and then slowly painting it over a couple of dozen freshly prepared strawberry tarts. Anywhere else, he might have been adding the final touch to some pre-prepared desserts. But here, his assistant was ladling crème pâtissière into pastry bases to make the next batch, while a bowlful of glistening fresh strawberries was waiting to be set on top.
And this, remember, is a simple neighbourhood café on a not-very-rich street corner in unfashionable northern Paris. You don’t have to go to famous addresses or obey your guidebook to find good food. Often, it’s just as easy to follow your nose.
Menu for success
Leaving out the more obvious considerations such as
